A Shipboard Diary written by Annie and Harold Beauchamp on board RMS Ruahine Wellington to London 19 March - 5 May 1898

Author(s): Annie and Harold Beauchamp; Ian Gordon

Biography | rare & collectable

Designed and printed by Alan Loney on an Asbern cylinder proof press. The text type is Linotype Paragon set by John Denny at Puriri Press and the display type is Monotype Centaur handset by the printer. Printed on damped Centrepoint handmade paper made by Ulrich Schmid, one of fifty printed on this paper, not numbered. Edited with an introduction by Ian A. Gordon with 3 interruptions by Caroline Williams. Signed by Gordon and Williams. 


Product Information

On 19 March 1898 Katherine Mansfield's parents sailed from Wellington to London via Buenos Aires on a business trip. Harold Beauchamp booked the best available 1st Saloon cabin on the steamship S.S. Ruahine, and he and Annie found their living quarters for the six-week voyager not only luxurious but, in Annie's sometimes individual spelling, "comfe". Leaving the children in New ZealandKatherine was ten years old and waiting for her first story to appear in the Wellington Girls College Reporter—Annie Beauchamp began a diary expressly for the children, in which she kept a daily account of the voyage. When the weather occasionally laid her low, Harold took over in a measured descriptive prose rather different from Annie's lively notations, her quick accounts of her condition, shipboard events and her sharp observations on her travelling companions.


Together these parental writings provide a view of the Beauchamps that editor Emeritus Professor Ian Gordon maintains is out of step with "the Linda and Stanley Burnell of their daughter's stories "Prelude" and "At the Bay" .... The Beauchamps emerge from this shipboard diary in a different light, a devoted couple, each attentive to the other's welfare". The diary was mailed back to 75 Tinakori Road, Wellington, shortly after they arrived in London. The diary then remained with the Beauchamp family until a few years ago, when it was given by Katherine Mansfield's youngest sister, the late Mrs Jeanne Renshaw, to her friend Lady Carnwath, who in turn generously presented it to the editor. After publication of this book, the diary was deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

General Fields

  • : 9230000000001
  • : The Holloway Press
  • : The Holloway Press
  • : March 1998
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 8v0
  • : Annie and Harold Beauchamp; Ian Gordon
  • : decorative cloth
  • : Limited/Numbered Edition
  • : Caroline Williams
  • : Fine
  • : B/W drawings, facsimiles